As an example of travel control techniques for automotive vehicles, Patent Document 1 discloses a technique in which “in a vehicle control device configured to prevent occurrence of any interference by performing automatic braking or issuing an alarm to a driver if the distance between an own vehicle and a preceding vehicle as detected by a radar device decreases to a predetermined value or less, the reception level of a reflected wave for detecting a stationary object has a threshold set to be high in a predetermined region relative to the threshold of the reception level of a reflected wave of an electromagnetic wave radiated from the radar device such as a laser radar device or a pulse radar device for a moving object such as the preceding vehicle. As a consequence, it is possible to prevent any gate or road debris, which will not obstruct the own vehicle from being detected and misidentified as an obstacle and to prevent any unnecessary automatic braking or alarm from being applied or issued with respect to the gate or road debris.” (extracted from the Abstract)